Environment

Innovation often does not look like a brand new technology, but like a smart new combination of existing technologies. Solar panels have been around a long time, long enough for President Carter to famously put them on the roof of the White House and for President Reagan to infamously take them down. There’s also nothing new about crowd funding, where a group of people collectively pool their money together in order to finance a shared project.

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I'm looking forward to attending the unconference at Compostmodern, where sustainability and design meet. As an urban farmer/user experience designer, I love this fertile ground where disciplines aren't so disciplined, and people aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.

I mean this literally – I'd rather meet people over compost than coffee.

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It's World Water Day today!    

WWD grew out of a UN Conference on the Environment and development in Rio in 1992 and is focused on putting water quality on the political agenda for the over a billion people living without access to clean water, and the 2.6 billion who lack access to improved sanitation.

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It is ironic that I write this while traveling from Seattle to New York by airplane.  Three years ago I set out to measure my carbon footprint from air travel.  Back in 2007 I clocked nearly 70,000 miles and a carbon footprint on the order of 25 tons of CO2. In 2008 the number dropped to 56,000 miles and about 22 tons of CO2. This year, I've only flown about 29,000 miles for around 10 tons of CO2.

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CivicActions client Rare Conservation has a first of it's kind Masters Program for Conservationists, available in 4 languages. "Students from areas of highest biodiversity around the world implement an entire social marketing campaign designed around a specific conservation goal, by mobilizing constituents in their communities." The degree requires positive impact.

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"Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich."

I'm feeling 100 times more inspired tonight after reading the Commencement Address by Paul Hawken's (Blessed Unrest) from Sunday, May 3rd. The text is below and speaks for itself! PAUL HAWKEN'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there. But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation - but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

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Back in January I posted a blog about my carbon footprint for 2007. With 36 flights spanning nearly 70,000 miles, I had calculate my carbon footprint at a little bit more than 14 tons of CO2, turns out I had some bad numbers in there and overestimated it by maybe 2 or 3 tons.

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Owen put up a website that uses a math problem to get people to think about a very important number, 350ppm CO2.

I just turned is math problem into a short animated video using a website called GoAnimate.com.
Watch my video below:

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On June 15th, the Great Turtle Race 2008 reached its conclusion, after 14 days of people from across the world cheering on their favorite turtles. Organized by TOPP, NOAA, and Drexel University, the Race is a Flash application that processes data from tagged leatherbacks into an animated "turtle race".

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350.org just relaunched their website and a killer video that explains the 350 idea without a word. Good for multilingual explications. Don't misunderestimate the power of 350...